Blue Hair Buddha

Walking on a Street in a Chinese City

Cheap prefabricated slabs crumble under the feet of thousands as they wander slowly through the city. The sun hangs overhead, the concrete radiating waves of  heat preventing any extra exertion such as rushing to work but for some reason not the drunk like pushing everywhere. The women hold frilly umbrellas in attempt to prevent a tan, I myself have become quite tan in China without ever being in the direct sun for more than five minutes.

Shops are tucked under attempts of modern buildings which have only achieved bland hard cubes of living space. The men and children stare while all the women look away. Shop keepers and vendors yell at anyone whose eye lingers on their products for more than a second in attempts to draw them in. I stumble along with a river of people down the sidewalk, passing the ugliest dogs, and the aches of a country between a time of intense poverty and a plastic consumer dream.

How long until China changes?

I have been gaining much more depth in my understanding and connections in China. It is a country far more complex than the US. It takes years of living in China before one really understands the culture, politics, and how things work. But in my cumulative three months in China one thing that is clear: it's an unstable country headed for change.

In the next five to ten years there will be a lot of change in the government role. The top 1% in China have left over the last decade, they're completely gone now. Irreversible damage has been done with the one child policy that should have been faded out in the 90's. Dissatisfaction is growing among everyone. I doubt there will be revolution, but an end is coming to the amount of government control. Some freedom in thought, action, and speech is coming soon -I hope. In many ways anything can happen.

An evening in Guangzhou

I'm in Guangzhou now and already teaching at an English immersion summer camp called "American Scene". Our councilor t-shirts have american flags on them -let's just say we stand out on the street. Luckily the school did not actually pick the shirts. Despite the uniforms we're actually doing some really cool alternative education practices for China, but I'll get into that later after I catch you all up on Woodenfish.

However, I need to tell you a little about today...

So the power goes out and the kids (ages 8-10,) screamed pretending to be scared. The moment it went dark one kid grabbed a half dozen scissors and ran straight out the door. I blocked the other kids from running out while Nico (a CIT,) went after the kid. Apparently when Nico caught him the boy claimed he had to go to the bathroom badly, Nico thought this was BS -like anybody would- and dragged him back to the class. When the lights turned back on there was a big wet spot on his pants. These kids are more than a handful.

This evening I went out to dinner with a bunch of teachers at the Beijing restaurant. I don't know what it's really called, we just name them after their food style. Anyways, the food was awesome.

When we left the restaurant these dudes in the photo below were sitting on the street corner playing a banjo. My heart twinged for Zoe, but then I had a good laugh at the Chinese style music adapted to banjo. We hung out for a few minutes and they played us a song, there was mutual entertainment on both sides. The guy playing the Banjo was definitely the most clothed out of the five of them. It's fairly accepted for men to wander around anywhere they want at night without a shirt. Seriously, they grocery shop without a shirt past 6pm. This group were a bunch of construction workers relaxing after a long day. God... or more like Buddha: I love Asia.

Chinese Food

Chinese food is pretty strange in taste to Americans. The Chinese really do have their own pallet for taste. The food is all lightly fried at high temperatures and can vary from very spicy, sickeningly sweet, or incredibly bland. There are a few dishes I like which are basically lightly fried vegetables and lots of salt.

My favorite restaurants are of course the local ones. They're usually the first floor of somebodies home. Plastic table and chairs are crammed into a typically 20 x 20 ft. room and a kitchen out back which is often just outside. 

A particular favorite meal I had with Josh and Zack was in a small city. We walked for maybe an hour but only found chain restaurants. Eventually we walked far enough to cross the red-light district. Technically prostitution is illegal in China but it's all over of course. There's loads of ways they signal customers. One of the more common methods is pink striped barber polls/pink lite shop. Turns out red or I guess pink-light district was the area crammed with these family restaurants having nothing to do with the prostitution business. There was also somewhat of a night market with kids running around, it was all mixed together -very strange, but very China.

We found a good looking restaurant and sat down. Josh and I explained to Zack what we wanted and he ordered it. The room was white tiled floors with white concrete walls and blinding fluorescent lights. The food was served within five minutes of ordering as it pretty much always does in China. While eating I had to brush a cockroach off my leg -and this was one of the cleaner restaurants. I've had some pretty good luck not getting sick despite the risky food choices I've been making. It's worth it though, the food taste much better and it tends to be far less oily.

Speaking of oil, 10% of the cooking oil in China is recycled. By this I mean there is a market for people to wander around at night after the restaurants closed and collect oil out of sink drains and other waste liquid places. It's collected in barrels, sold, "purified," and then used again. Yum!

I'm tired of Chinese food but it still beats the American fast-food sold here. I miss coffee, bread, fresh fruit and vegetables.

Nuns and Friends

Venerable Yifa (pronounce her name like "e"-fa,) has been guiding the Buddhism in China Woodenfish Program for the past four years. Each year she chooses a different province in China to explore, this year of course being the general Shanghai area. We ventured quite a distance from Shanghai (about 5-6 hours by bus,) to visit loads and loads of sites. Yifa is fantastic, I really liked her. She is a Taiwanese nun from Fo Guang Shan Temple. She has spent quite a bit of time in the US, so we had a hard time surprising her. She's kind, articulate, has a sense of humor, and born leader. Below is Yifa and the Abbot during a Q&A. The photo might have been when I asked a ridiculous questions.

I showed Yifa the photo below of my brother Oliver dressed as a nun with the Ghost Busters. Yifa gazed at the photo for a few moments, probably trying to figure out what was happening,  then laughed out loud and said: "Good, the Catholics need more nuns." I beginning to think the weird things the Chinese and Taiwanese eat don't really match up to the strange things we do in the States. I suppose this was some event in Portland of running around like a nun that Oliver either organized or was a major role. I'm not really sure.

My two buddies for the week were Josh (on the left,) and Zack (on the right, plus Buddha in the middle (in the clouds,)) Josh is from the Midwest and had an awesome sense of humor. He was also very tolerant of several difficulties on the trip. Zack is from Seattle, studies at Fo Guang Shan Temple, and is fluent in Mandarin -which I totally took advantage of. Also, he studies happiness, which I've only joked about studying myself, but now the path has come into my vision (however, still horrendously blurred.) There were other fun folks who I shall mention later on. 

Kungfu

At Tiantai Mountain we went to the temple then met up with Yifa's friends. One of them was a kungfu master/unlicense chyropractor/medicine man. About a year ago Yifa took the wrong medicine (Chinese medicine) and became paralized. I'm not smashing Chinese medicine, some of it works since it's still practiced, but clearly in this situation it did not. So this Kungfu master/unlicense chyropractor/medicine man fixed Yifa in three weeks. He did a small Kungfu demonstration which unraveled quickly.

The type of kungfu this guy knows is about cultivating power and sending it to one place. It's not about quick jabs or dance around. It's quick, powerful, and minimal moves to kill -I guess. He made it clear he was 57 years old, and looked pretty healthy too.

His first demonstration was pushing Josh's two arms with his two fingers. Kind of like arm wrestling. You can guess who won.

His demonstrations continued to pushing other people. He would simply push other people without any struggle. Josh held his hips while the Kungfu guy stood virtically. He just walked into Josh, who was leaning all the way into him, and Josh slid as he walked with ease. It was pretty amazing. He was a fairly legitament Kungfu dude.

Naomi volunteered to test his stregth, they tried to come up with another test of stregth, but he was kind of doing the thing of: "Meh, just a woman." He told her to try to hit him. She got pumped up and jumped around a bit, he laughed, she did a few quick jabs and punched him in the face. He was totally caught off guard, the group gasped, he didn't seem to show any pain.  Turns out Naomi is a european karate champion.

I don't have a photo of them fighting, I was sort of/kind of cowering in the back.

They had one more round, both were quick, he was completely on the defense but lightly slapped her face then it was over. I had a hard time watching, there was some humiliation going on at both ends. Kungfu dude lite up a cigarette, then said: "I don't dance around and do quick jabs, I just pull out the heart. I cut skin like tofu." He was kind of a sore loser, but he could probably do it.

Later on he claimed he could cure illness just by waving his hand over somebody and guide the yin into balance with the yang. It was a bit out there, but then again Kungfu guy was kind of out there with this skills he showed us.

Dr. Max

It turns out I have the highest medical training in the group -Wilderness First Responder, or another way to think of it is I have half the training of an EMT. However, there are major differences, my training is based for medicine in the wilderness, so I'm trained to make do with little or no medical tools or medicine. Also, its fairly "rough" medicine. By that I mean I am trained to know what to do when peoples intestines fall out, not so much along the lines of cosmetic issues, but I still have treated some rashes.

So far on this trip I have had to bring one person to the hospital for food poisoning in combination with heat stroke. I have also treated a bunch of minor issues like skin infections, insect bites, and more heat issues. A lot of it is waiting it out, people's bodies react when brought to new environments. Later on I heard that 18 out of the group of 30 last year had diarrhea.

One of the difficulties I did not expect to deal with is the Chinese believe 100% in Chinese medicine. During the food poisoning/heat exhaustion Yifa ordered the Chinese medical treatment of pinching this guys neck until it bruised -it put him in a lot of pain. Apparently it wicked the heat out. I asked for it to stop but Yifa ordered it to continue, so they did. The pain kind of distracted him from vomiting. I told the individual that he could ask for it to stop, he didn't, so I figure it was best to let this one fly by.

We got him to the hospital and everyting was okay. I feel some pressure now being the group medic. Later on somebody passed out at a temple due to the heat, luckily there was a doctor at the temple who took care of them.

I hope nothing really bad happens, but I suppose I'm ready for it.

The Begining of Woodenfish

I am currently participating in the Woodenfish Buddhism in China program, which is exploring Han Buddhism in the Shanghai area. It's two weeks long with about two dozen students and seven staff (mostly professors, a monk, and a nun.)

The daily flow is eating at around 7:30-8:30 in the morning, getting on a tour bus, and exploring two to three temples and/or sights a day. There's a constant information being thrown at us while we attempt to overcome cultural barriers. In the evenings we typically have free time after five to go find food and occasionally the old street or night market.

Making Candy at a shop on the Old Street

We have been staying in temples and hotels, so far about a 50/50 mix. We ride the same bus everyday with the same chain smoking crazy driver. Our first guide was Johnny, I don't know his chinese name, but he was hired by Woodenfish to show us around. Every morning he would start us with a bad joke then tell us about the temple or town we were going to that day. Our second guide repeats every other word twice. She can be hard to listen to but has incredible stories, for example she was in the Red Guard.

At every temple we visit we sit down with the abbot and have a one to two hour Q&A. Since it's usually after lunch, and in an airconditioned room (a break from the 90-105F weather,) I usually fall asleep. Seriousl, I try so hard to stay awake, but it's the same story with the bus, my body just wants to recover. The heat is intense, espeacially when it's humid, it has been (luckily?) the largest problem for the group. Luckily I have been getting better at stay awake the whole day, and these interviews are really interesting. I get to ask the abbots personal questions about how they managed to get through the cultural revolution, how they meditate, what made them want to become monks... it's awesome.

Shanghai

I flew into Shanghai with no reservations of any type with two days to kill. The women who were in charge of find tourist places to go at the airport basically had it with me, especially after I tried to write on a businesscard (forgot about that one! I definitely know better.) I recalled that a few other people in my program which started in two days mentioned on facebook they were staying open at a hostel. I cracked open my lonely planet (but not so lonely routes,) and sure enough the hostel was in it.

It was fairly easy to find using the subway, and when I arrived they had some bunks open in the dorm rooms. It was about $12 a night and pretty clean. I found a few other people in my woodenfish program and walked around town with them a bit, but they became jetlag, so eventually we headed back.

Shanghai is a fairly insane Chinese city with American, French, and British archetecture scattered all throughout the skyline. It's a prtty weird mix to say the least. It's also a pretty nutty city. Walking the Bund was interesting/intense too. It's a walk next to the river, on oneside is all the old French and British buildings, and on the other is all the modern Chinese skyscrappers. Tons of people wanted photographs with us, and it got old quick. After that we escaped to a shopping district of sorts (it was within walking distance,) which was a total zoo with packed streets.

Tea House

Mao on the Bund

In the evening I walked to the Jing'an Temple (below) near my hostel.